With IoT expected to hit 50 billion devices by 2020, some say the sector needs better development support for producing low-power, long-range IoT solutions -- and at a fast clip. Senet is launching The Foundry, a set of tools and expert services to help developers rapidly design and launch such IoT projects.

Analytics technology firm Zettics is providing a deeper set of big data-based insights for network operators. Zettics 9.0 insights, which are offered in a format that resembles pre-built Hadoop apps, enable operators to solve specific business problems, get subscriber feeds to their big data platforms, and perform ad-hoc sandbox analysis for data discovery.

In the wake of surveys that find 60% of mobile network operators say they have come under attack. Arbor Networks Inc. has launched its Peakflow Mobile Network Analysis to give network service providers better visibility, including advanced threat protection for fixed networks, HSPA/LTE and cloud infrastructures.

Tufin Technologies is looking to make it easier to ensure apps and data always comply with changing security and policy requirements. The latest edition of Tufin’s Orchestration Suite, shipping in April, sports change automation, unified security policy features and collaboration capabilities to support teamwork among dev, opps and security stakeholders across legacy and cloud environments.

Openmind Networks is opening its mobile communications platform to third-party devs via a new API. The Openmind API will allow devs to tap into a range of telecom functionality to create and launch a variety of apps across multiple access devices.

HP is rolling out a wave of new networking products and services based on its FlexNetwork architecture, aimed at helping enterprise customers overcome limitations they face in launching mission-critical mobile, cloud and multimedia apps.

Datapipe, a provider of managed services and data center infrastructure for IT and cloud computing, MASERGY, a provider of secure virtualized network services to enterprises, and LinkSource Technologies, a provider of IT consulting services are teaming up to secure private clouds for global use.

Ping Identity is shipping a new series of PingFederate OpenID Cloud Identity Connectors to allow enterprises to rely on cloud services providers and as well as social-networking sites for third-party user authentication. Ping’s offering works with Facebook, Google, AOL and Yahoo!

Expand Networks is looking to jumpstart channel demand for wide-area networking optimization with a pay-as-you-sell pricing model for service providers, telcos and public/private cloud providers. The new pricing arises from Expands’ aggressive adoption of virtualization techniques for WANs.